Poll Technica: would you sign up for Amazon e-book subscriptions?

Amazon is reportedly in talks to bring an e-book subscription services to the …

Kindle users: how many of you would whip out your credit cards right now for a subscription-based service that allowed you to access an entire library of Amazon books for a flat fee? If you're anything like us at the Ars Orbiting HQ, you're likely already reaching for your wallets. But don't get excited yet, as such a service is reportedly in the "talks" stage and may never materialize, thanks to the fears of publishers.

The rumor about Amazon's potential new service, which doesn't seem to have a name but could come packaged with the $79 Amazon Prime shipping service, comes from sources speaking to the Wall Street Journal. According to those sources, subscribers would be able to pay an annual fee in order to access the library, which would include "older titles" and might impose a limit on the number of "free" books a user could access every month. The sources didn't offer any extra details as to whether Amazon was working on bringing its entire library of newer books to the service in the future, or if it would allow publishers to choose whether they want to participate.

That's a major hurdle for Amazon. According to "several publishing executives" who spoke to the Journal, they have reservations about participating in a subscription-based service for fear that it might lower the value of books in the eyes of customers. This is the same reason publishers battled with Amazon throughout 2010 over the pricing of their e-books—Amazon used to near-universally price Kindle books at $9.99, but publishers worried that the flat price devalued their products. This led to an eventual showdown that resulted in publishers getting their way and switching to "agency model" pricing, which ultimately led to slightly higher prices for many e-books sold through the Kindle store.

It's clear that publishers don't like giving up control of the pricing of their books, and they're positive their books are worth more than what Amazon thinks they're worth. Because of this, it will undoubtedly be an uphill battle for Amazon to convince them to take part in a radical new e-book rental service, though Amazon is supposedly offering them a "substantial fee" for signing on. Whether that fee will be enough to quell their fears about the value of their books is anyone's guess, but for those of us who are addicted to our Kindles (or Kindle apps, as the case may be), we can only hope the companies can hammer out a deal.

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Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui